Comparing Telstra's Go Mobile with Optus' Family Sharing smartphone plans

Telstra today launched smartphone plans that pool the available data allowance and share it with members of the family. These ‘Go Mobile’ plans follow the release of ‘Family Sharing’ plans introduced by Optus last month. Here, you’ll find a comparison focussing on value for money and price.

Value for money

Undercutting the competition on price is the family sharing plans from Optus. Take the carrier’s $60 My Plan Plus for instance, which is comparable to Telstra’s $70 Go Mobile pan.

The Optus plan:
• is $10 cheaper
• Offers unlimited national calls, when Telstra caps the value at $1000
• And comes with 500MB more data than Telstra at 3GB per month.

Signing up to a plan that offers 6GB of monthly data reveals a similar story. Although both carriers offer a plan with unlimited national calls and text messaging, along with a 6GB data allowance, Optus charges $15 less at $80 per month.

Telstra offers a plan with the highest data allowance with its $195 XXL plan packing 16GB of data. This doesn’t necessarily translate to the best value.

Optus’ most expensive Family Sharing plan costs $100 and comes with 10GB of data per month. Buy two of these plans and, although it will cost $5 extra than Telstra’s, it will come with 4GB of more data every month.

It’s also worth noting Optus’ cheapest contractual plan is $40 a month compared to Telstra’s introductory $55 plan. Despite being $15 cheaper, Optus’ plan benefits from an unlimited call and texting allowance, compared to Telstra’s $550 voice call cap.

Bundle a SIM only plan

Parents with a smartphone to spare can sign up for a SIM only, month-to-month plan from Telstra or Optus.

Optus’ SIM only plan costs $30 a month, comes with 500MB of data and, until 31 May, comes with unlimited national voice calls and texts.

Telstra’s casual Go Mobile plan starts from $35 per month, has capped voice calls at $300, unlimited national texting and a data allowance of 500MB. It doesn’t sound like much, but it could prove worthwhile if it is bundled with a $195, 16GB plan.

Parents will appreciate Telstra’s free cyber security tool for children, which allows parents to “set time-of-day limits on calls and mobile web use, block unwanted calls and texts and choose the mobile web content that can be accessed on mobile devices”.

Extra data charges

Telstra is changing the way it calculates extra data charges. Every additional gigabyte of data will be priced at $10. The pricing change will come into effect next week on 12 May.

The move is reactionary as rival Optus — along with Vodafone — already charge $10 for each additional gigabyte of data.

Netflix v Presto and co

Telstra offers customers a choice of content:
• A 6 month subscription to Presto OR
• A 12 month subscription to NRL Digital Pass or AFL Live Pass.

Optus customers will get a free 6 month subscription to Netflix; however, this offer is only eligible to customers who sign up before 5 July.